State of the Winwar in 2018

So, as per usual in December I’m doing a recap of the year.

Well…quite a year for the company behind Winwar Media, if not necessarily for the site. It’s been much of the muchness for my main sites whilst I’ve been growing a side site. But I feel like it’s been a good year, with my sites doing okay – even if for the first year since starting the site it’s not my main focus anymore.

9 Goals Made (3 Personal, 6 Business) – 6 Hit

Last year I set 9 goals: 3 personal and 6 business goals. I quite liked it, but I think I’m going to next year get this up to 10 goals for this year. It’s easier to work out a percentage of them hit. So as I write this on my last personal day in November, a Friday afternoon, where my brain is fried, I cannot work out how I’ve done. So of the 9 goals, these are the ones that – as of today – I’ve hit.

• Improve My Email List – Yeah I’ve hit this, though not quite as much as I would have liked. I managed to set it to be GDPR lovely & also segmented it – with some segments performing really well, but I didn’t set up an onboarding process with Drip yet. I’ll do that next year.
• Create eBay Feeds for WordPress Premium.
• Speak at 3 Conferences: One Outside the Country – I’ve done so, and I’ve used the word “Country”, rather than “The UK”, so WordCamp Edinburgh counts!
• Improve Standing in the WordPress Community – This was code for “Go to more events”. I set a goal for 6 meetups and 3 WordCamps. I attended countless meetups and 5 WordCamps.
• And the absolute first goal – Go Freelance. I also set a goal to hit a financial figure with it. I have done :).

The ones that I haven’t hit

• Make Winwar Media Self Sustaining – It’s sustainable, but not self-sustaining. My goal was to eventually hire a writer to write 6 or 12 blog posts for the year, so if you are interested, get in touch.
• Improve WP Email Capture Premium So I can Justify Switching on Auto Renewals – Yeah, this hasn’t even started. Shame, not sure what to do with this right now as WP Email Capture has dropped quite a lot in revenue, but it’s still worth maintaining.
• Buy a House – Yeah this didn’t happen after January, I’m not too bothered, as I’ve gone freelance instead :).

Winwar – Less Traffic, More Income

So last year I talked about the change in structure of plugins on Winwar Media, in that when you sign up you are set up with an Automatic Paypal Renewal. This has been a bit of success as I’ve started getting renewals now and so far everybody seems happy. There have been a couple of cancellations, but overall people are happy with having to not update their subscription and then questioning why they cannot upgrade.

Also, the site has seen a small number of affiliate sales based on my new WordPress Plugin Reviews section. I’d be looking to improve that next year.

Dwi’n Rhys, and Thank You

Of course, the big thing so far has been the launch and the early success of Dwi’n Rhys. You can see that since launch I’ve yet to display my “Freelance Availability Widget” because, well, I’ve been booked up. At the time of writing I’m booked up to mid January, which is a lovely position to be in. Two communities have been useful – the SEO community who have been supportive in terms of referring work, and the WordPress community that has been useful when it comes to providing support. So for that, thank you.

Stats Round Up & AMA

So the same as last year here’s a roundup of stats for my 3 main sites between 2017 & 2018 from January to November. Like last year I’m not sure what to provide knowledge wise, so if you have any questions, or insights you want, feel free to put it in the comments.

Winwar Media Site

Traffic was down 10% on last year. This was largely due to a couple of abandoned plugins getting a lot less traffic in search. The biggest traffic day was February 13th. Bit of a strange one but there we go!

The most popular post (this year) is Your WordPress Not Secure in Google Chrome, here’s how to fix it…, which had over 14,000 visitors, up nearly a third on last year. The most popular post from this year was How to Add a Product Description in a WooCommerce Archive. The most popular plugin was eBay Feeds for WordPress.

WP Email Capture

Traffic was down 31% on last year. I’m a bit surprised on the drop to be honest, but there we go. The biggest traffic day was January 21st. Bit of a strange one but there we go!

The biggest post is How To Set Up WP Email Capture Free. The most popular post from this year is a guest post on 5 Ways to Build Your Email List.

Wrestling Betting

Traffic was down 20% on last year. This was kind of expected as the betting markets for wrestling has dropped a fair bit. The biggest day was April 8th (which coincides with Wrestlemania).

The biggest post of the year, ironically, was The Form Guide for PROGRESS Super Strong Style 16.

Anyway, that’s my posts from this year. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!